Ex-undergrad-assistant in a organic synthesis lab, here. I am extremely familiar with glass cleaning procedures, having done it nearly daily for one long semester.<p>Base bath is how you clean glassware.<p>The base bath was a _saturated_ solution of KOH (potassium hydroxide) in a 10-gallon PTFE (molded "teflon"). You knew it was saturated by the KOH precipitate at the bottom.<p>You take your "dirties", making absolutely sure they had no residual acid on them, and ever so slowly, ease them into the bath. 24 or 36 hours later, remove them and repeat with the next batch.<p>After a few dozen cycles, you have to change out the base for fresh stuff. For that, you needed a face shield, shoulder gloves, and extremely steady hands.<p>Tedious, dangerous work.
It's interesting to me how concentrated HF is just universally acknowledged as one of the 'big bads' of chemistry labs.<p>I've run into "Yes HF works here but SERIOUSLY DON'T" in so many different contexts and processes. Sounds like a lovely thing to keep a nice distance from!
In case anyone else wanted to cut to the chase - as in, what is the most badass, dangerous, corrosive and potentially deadly cleaning method:<p><i>Hydrofluoric: Concentrated solutions of HF will remove just about everything from glass and will even etch the surface of the glass itself. It should not be used on calibrated volumetrics. HF causes severe, painful burns that do not heal well, and prolonged or intense exposure can lead to a very slow, painful death. It is not to be used by any students at Truman under any circumstances.</i>
Acidic peroxide solution is also known commonly as piranha solution. You can clean silicon wafer by dropping them in. Any organic residue is toast, however.
Using Alconox (mentioned on the page, and easily found on Amazon) is one my tricks when I absolutely need sparkling clean dishes or containers. Not the best choice for the environment, and too sudsy to use in a dishwasher, but amazingly effective.
Frustratingly familiar from my college days is the vagueness of these instructions. "Wear appropriate gloves." Such as? It is easier to write "wear butyl gloves." Even the MSDS for 6M HCl doesn't say "wear butyl gloves" it says "Select glove material impermeable and resistant to the substance." Like, duh. Is there a PPE lobbyist who prevents people from writing down concrete recommendations?
Chemistry is an amazing science and we probably need a lot more chemists....<p>But I'm sure glad I don't have to go near any of this stuff!<p>Hard to believe there's any hobby chemists out there messing with mercury and stuff, handling most of these chemicals seems like something you'd only ever do for a huge salary or if you believed your work was going to save many lives.
I once had to work with some thio compounds. Infamous for their god-awful vomit-inducing smell. A labmate used to have migraine attacks if someone was working with them , in the fume hood.<p>The glasswares, along with the spent disposables, gloves etc were dumped into bleach solution. Even after a full month soaked in bleach and whatnot, I could still smell the nasty odor from the beakers and flasks.
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thiol" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thiol</a>
Why isn’t lab glassware, with few exemptions, a single use item? How can the human safety risks in cleaning, and the analysis risks from residual contamination be valued less than the cost of fresh equipment made of…glass. Really nice glass, but simply mass-produced objects made of silicon and oxygen. Just make some more.<p>The 1970s <i>Muppet Show</i> US television program had a recurring segment on “Muppet Labs” with a hapless lab assistant named Beaker given silly and dangerous things to do by his boss. These cleaning processes sound like a Beaker bit. But the Muppet Show was a comedy…
Nile Red got into a situation where some of his glassware was damaged by a reaction but mixed into his still good glassware. He decided to break it all to be sure!<p>That's another cleaning strategy.
I find glass fritted filters specially problematic when you can't even see inside
the fritt. Maybe it's just me but I'd much rather a Buchner funnel with appropriate filter media.<p>I really like the all-glass filter holders with the 24-40 ground glass bases instead of the gooch seals. The smelly rubber gooch seals seem to go to shit so quickly.
<i>”...the use of chromic acid is not recommended.”</i><p>Whilst rightfully it's not fashionable nowadays, I can attest however that chromic acid cleans glassware remarkably well (once it was just about the only cleaner we used).
For the chemists here, I have a question I’ve always been curious of.<p>Would you eat/drink out of glassware that had been made “quantitatively clean”?
1 atom or molecule of catalyzator will given enough time render a reaction happy liquid inert. Sneeze at platinum near a hydrogen peroxide storage and within a week..
i feel like this could be a fascinating series of youtube videos targeting the "oddly satisfying" niche.<p>edit: should've known it would already be a thing :) <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utBxdlN7YFI&t=9s" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utBxdlN7YFI&t=9s</a>